Locked-in people’s awareness revealed by rainbow hair

People who are in a vegetative state can sometimes have some awareness of their surroundings, but it can be difficult for doctors and family to work out how much when they can’t respond physically or verbally.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge measured 32 patients’ brain activity using an electroencephalograph (EEG) machine. The team analysed the networks of signals between brain regions in a bid to discover what they call “the neural signatures of consciousness”, shown in this image.

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They discovered that in some of these patients, the networks looked similar to those of healthy people. These same patients had shown signs of awareness in more laborious tests, such as those in which they have to respond to the command “imagine playing tennis” while having an MRI scan of their brain.

The technique could lead to a relatively cheap and easy method of identifying a person’s level of consciousness.